'Avatar' - Why The 15th Anniversary Of James Cameron's Original Blockbuster Inspires Not Celebration But Despair

James Cameron's aspirational box office triumph only inspired Hollywood to exploit 3-D to boost overseas grosses and thus justify a decade of relentless franchise recycling and corporate consolidation

Walt Disney announced yesterday that it had surpassed $2 billion at the domestic box office, becoming the only studio to do so in 2024. It did likewise in 2022, becoming the first and second studio to achieve this thus far in the 2020s. That includes $637 million from Deadpool & Wolverine, $171 million from Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and $105 million from Alien Romulus, along with $21 million from The First Omen plus around $40 million in films from Searchlight like Poor Things (which earned $24 million out of $35 million this calendar year), Kinds of Kindness, A Real Pain, and All of Us Strangers. For that matter, their $2 billion-plus run in 2022 was partially due to Avatar: The Way of Water, which earned $401 million of its $685 million domestic cume in the first two weeks of release. As such, this milestone was a bitterly ironic way to celebrate the 15th anniversary of James Cameron’s Avatar.